I see. A traffic infraction is a criminal offense? Because there are foreigners here - legally - who are exempt from US jurisdiction, meaning traffic, civil, and criminal offenses: diplomats and representatives of foreign Governments here on official business. In fact, Senator Howard was quite clear in that fact.
So, what person is here that is not subject to US jurisdiction, other than such diplomats and officials? Perhaps a review of the definition of jurisdiction is called for before you answer.
I'd be most interested in where you found the meaning of jurisdiction that you claim; it must reside in the Constitution somewhere.
Or, do you hold the protections afforded in the 14th Amendment means that we can go out and rob, beat, and kill any foreigner on our land - whether here legally or not - because they are not subject to the jurisdiction of the US Government, and thus do not have the protections of the Constitution (per the 14th)?
“A traffic infraction is a criminal offense?”
It’s known in the law as a quasi-criminal offense, as it is based in the penal codes of the respective states and is punishable. One is not legally punished in the US simply for being a foreigner.
Diplomats are specifically identified in the US Codes as being exempt from a small handful of ordinances, and that’s only because of political courtesy (i.e., we do not want our diplomats and government personnel serving in foreign lands to be hassled for small offenses, so we have agreed to so exempt the samer who are here in the US on OFFICIAL duties.
Take a basic class in Constitutional law. If your professor is honest, and is not pursuing a political agenda, he or she will admit that it was only relatively recently that activists trotted out the fiction that merely being born in the US makes one a US citizen. An illustration: A pregnant French woman vacationing in Chicago goes into early labor and delivers a baby in a restaurant on Wacker Drive. That kid is not an automatic American citizen. It is recognized both in the US and in France as a French citizen. The difference between that scenario is that the French mother and her baby will return to France, but a Mexican mother who dashes across the border into Arizona and has her kid at a Phoenix bus stop has no intention at all of returning to Mexico, and will refuse to do so, arguing the myth that she can’t leave her American baby.
“We have this common understanding of when you come here to visit, that you are subject to our jurisdiction. You have to obey our traffic laws. If you come here from England, you have to drive on the right side of the road and not on the left side of the road,” he said. “But the framers of the 14th Amendment had in mind two different notions of ‘subject to the jurisdiction.’ There was what they called territorial jurisdiction— you have to follow the laws in the place where you are—but there was also this more complete, or allegiance-owing jurisdiction that held that you not only have to follow the laws, but that you owe allegiance to the sovereign. And that doesn’t come by just visiting here. That comes by taking an oath of support and becoming part of the body politic. And it is that jurisdiction that they are talking about in the 14th Amendment.”